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cahnI'm trying to use my other account at least occasionally so I posted about my Yuletide gifts there, including the salon-relevant 12k fic that features Fritz, Heinrich, Voltaire, Fredersdorf, Saint Germain, Caroline Daum (Fredersdorf's wife), and Groundhog Day tropes! (Don't need to know canon.)
French gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2023-01-18 07:49 pm (UTC)Olympe Mancini: Mother of Eugene of Savoy, lover of Louis XIV, niece of Cardinal Mazarin, exiled because of the Affair of the Poisons.
Louvois: Minister of War under Louis XIV, showed up a lot in the Man in the Iron Mask episode, refused Eugene advancement in the French army, leading to Eugene's defection to Austria, with fateful consequences.
What's what:
According to Henri Pigaillem, author of a 2005 bio of Eugene that I am reading for French practice (and at this rate I will finish next year), Louvois actually had a thing for Olympe when she and Louis were an item, but she wouldn't give him the time of day. So he ended up with a grudge against her and started denying her and her children opportunities and money whenever possible.
Briefly he tried to reconcile with her, but then his resentment got the upper hand and he was the one who implicated her in the Affair of the Poisons and got her banned.
I don't know if it's true, mind you, but this is what I have read. Will let you know if the Eugene bio turns up anything else interesting (I found it because it was the cited as the source of the claim that an envoy called Eugene gay long before he left France and supposedly alienated Liselotte, whom biographers like to call the only person to ever refer to Eugene as gay).
Re: French gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2023-01-19 08:04 pm (UTC)Google translated because I'm at work, but I did read it in French this morning. ;)
The friends have indeed founded a society with the aim of regularly celebrating orgies. One meets there favorites of Monsieur, brother of the King: the knight of Lorraine, the count of Guiche or the duke of Nevers. We also meet Eugène there, of whom Ezéchiel Spanheim, soon to be representative of Brandenburg in Paris, said bluntly: "It is certain that there is no greater sodomite in France than him and it would be a bad start for a young prince to begin his life with the most horrible debauchery in the world.”
Monsieur is of course gay Philippe, this Ezechiel quote is the one that we saw before. But it gets better!
The young androgynous François-Timoléon de Choisy recounts his "exploits" in his insolent Memoirs. Choisy does not hide his feminine nature. He bought a house, where "Madame" receives ladies and many gentlemen to whom she gives the opportunity to ascertain her sex. She has her self called herself by them the Comtesse de Barres. But at court he is a very neat abbot. However, Monsieur, the King's brother, shares part of his time with him because he likes cross-dressing and even more: "I was dressed as a girl every time the little Monsieur came to the house, and he came there at least two or three times a week. I had pierced ears, diamonds, beauty patches, and all the other little affectations to which one becomes very easily accustomed, and which is very difficult to get rid of. Monsieur, who also loved all that, always gave me a hundred marks of affection. In his Memoirs, the Marquis d'Argenson, future Lieutenant General of Police, to whom Choisy related his worst follies, wrote:
"The Abbé de Choisy kept as long as he could this impertinent habit of dressing as a woman, and we know all the follies he committed in this guise. “In his childhood,” said Sainte-Beuve finally, “his mother made him wear corsets which tightened him to the extreme and thus brought up a fat and chubby chest, so that, when he grew up, he had as much cleavage as a fifteen year old girl."
These follies, Choisy shares with Eugène, who has the opportunity to transform his deformed body into a more attractive silhouette thanks to the frilly outfits he likes to wear. At this same period, he already took a liking to tobacco, gambling and hunting, which he would love all his life. For the rest, the only times he would leave Vienna later, except to go to war, would be only to hunt down stags or wild boars. Even the court of France, which cannot boast of severity in this area, is indignant in the name of morality. The young princes take their friendships too far. The approximately 90,000 indiscreet letters left by Princess Palatine are not the only accounts we have. There is also a court document that relates the same incident. The princess, ugly, frustrated in her marriage to Philippe d'Orléans, ill-suited to the court of France, nostalgic for her German origins, compensates for her discomfort with an often outrageous prolixity. She speaks of the young Prince Eugene in these terms:
“When he was still very young, he was already called Madame Simone and Madame Lansiene (the old one) because, it was said, he often played the lady for young people."
But when the men say the same things about the same guy, they're not ugly and compensating? Sigh.
The small meetings in which one regularly finds the Choisys or the “Madames Simone” become a sensational affair when Louis XIV forces his fifteen-year-old son, the Count of Vermandois, to make revelations. He formed among his relatives a homosexual circle that almost all the young princes of the blood and their close friends are part of. Cardinal de Bouillon, brother-in-law of the poetess Marianne Mancini, the youngest of Eugène's aunts, is not absent. But the King cannot exterminate all the offspring of the high nobility. He must content himself with threats. He doesn't have time to think very seriously about purifying the mores of his court because he himself is too busy being dissolute.
*snort*
On the other hand, the Princess of Savoy-Carignan, Eugene's grandmother, outraged by his behavior, did not hesitate to kick her grandson out. Fortunately, the prince has too many friends in the capital to have trouble finding accommodation. Louvois writes to Condé that a certain Baigneur is giving him hospitality.
Re: French gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2023-01-20 08:55 am (UTC)the knight of Lorraine
LOL Google translate. The Chevalier de Lorraine, whose first name was "Philippe" which thus is not useable for either fanfiction or histories, least favourite person of both Philippe d'Orleans' wives, suddenly sounds like a fairy tale character.
the count of Guiche
Hang on, shouldn't he be already out of the picture if the Chevalier is around? I seem to recall de Guiche was the boyfriend who infuriated Philippe by also flirting with Minette, which means he can't overlap with the Liselotte years.
Ezéchiel Spanheim, soon to be representative of Brandenburg in Paris,
Was he working for the Great Elector or for F1?
The princess, ugly, frustrated in her marriage to Philippe d'Orléans, ill-suited to the court of France, nostalgic for her German origins, compensates for her discomfort with an often outrageous prolixity
As you say, what are the other sources compensating for, then? BTW, Liselotte repeatedly described herself as ugly as frankly as she describes most things in her letters ("my bearcat monkey face"), and since Eugene wasn't a favourite of her husbands, I still find it a mystersy as to why this should bias her remarks about him. (I mean, it doesn't mean she knows all about Eugene's intimate life, either, just that she reports the gossip as she's heard it, whether or not it's true.) Otoh, do you know whom she had very strong (hostile) feelings about? Louvois. As in:
I believe that M. de Louvois burns in hell because of the Palatinate; he was terribly cruel, no one can deny this...
(In a letter of 28 January 1708 to her aunt Sophie.
The small meetings in which one regularly finds the Choisys or the “Madames Simone” become a sensational affair when Louis XIV forces his fifteen-year-old son, the Count of Vermandois, to make revelations. He formed among his relatives a homosexual circle that almost all the young princes of the blood and their close friends are part of
That's one way of putting it. With the caveat that wiki is not necessarily reliable, here's the same story on Liselotte's wiki entry:
Simultaneously, Liselotte was drawn into a larger court scandal through her wardship of Comte of Vermandois, whose mother had left court to become a nun. The young comte had become embroiled in a secret homosexual 'brotherhood' of French nobles and courtiers, which required members to "swear an oath to renounce all women." Several incidents were reported in which women were sadistically tortured, and it also was reported that a poor waffle seller was raped, castrated and killed by courtiers.*Though the Duke of Orléans didn't belong to this brotherhood himself, many of his favorites did. In June 1682, it became known that the 'brotherhood' included the Prince of la Roche-sur-Yon and the young Comte of Vermandois, among other notable figures at court. Louis XIV punished his own son severely and sent him to war, where he died shortly afterwards at the age of 16. Liselotte later recalled: "The Comte de Vermandois was very good-natured. The poor person loved me as if I were his birth mother...He told me his whole story. He had been horribly seduced." One of his 'seducers' is said to have been the Chevalier de Lorraine—her husband's lover and her avowed enemy.
*This gruesome story is used in Anne Golon's Angelique novel, though in there Monsieur does participate. These were the first homosexual characters I encountered in fiction at age 9 or so, and I don't think I encountered any sympathetically written gay characters - in historical or centemporary fiction - until when I was 13 and read The Mists of Avalon (and then the Darkover novels). (Insert obvious comment about MZB's later discovered rl terribleness here, but those books were quite eye opening to young me back then.)
Anyway, raping, castrating and killing a guy and torturing women is quite different from organizing consensual m/m orgies, so I hope that it either didn't happen this way or that young Eugene did not participate.
Incidentally, Mildred, if you can get a digital copy of Voltaire's "Age of Louis XIV" in either English or German for me, I would be very grateful, and since this is supposed to be one of his big oeuvres, I would also do a write up for you.
Re: French gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2023-01-20 01:51 pm (UTC)If it turns out it's abridged or only the first volume of a series or there are other issues with this copy, just let me know.
We would greatly appreciate a write-up! And speaking of which, your recent Montesquieu post in Rheinsberg reminded me: do you have any plans to read Pöllnitz now that we have a great deal more background knowledge? I know you've browsed before, but I think last time it came up, you didn't have time to do more than dip in.
If not, no worries, just thought I'd ask! (You have us spoiled.)
Re: French gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2023-01-20 02:36 pm (UTC)Pöllnitz: we‘ll see, though it can‘t hurt to link me directly again.
Re: French gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2023-01-20 02:47 pm (UTC)Volume 1, if I'm not mistaken.
Pöllnitz: Vol 1, Vol 2.
Still done hurriedly, so let me know if there are problems!
Re: French gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2023-01-21 05:38 am (UTC)ahahaha thank you for pointing this out!
(Me: Oh, another person I haven't heard of, huh? ...OH.)
as Louis' secretary of war, Louvois of course has a great deal of responsibility for the scouring of the shire, err, the Palatinate, Liselotte's home which Louis shamelessly claimed in her name. The ultimate responsibility is with Louis, but blaming the King who can lock you up in a nunnery is always dicy.
Again, thank you! Yeah... I can't blame her for that. Also that I agree it doesn't make sehse for her to bias her remarks against Eugene??
These were the first homosexual characters I encountered in fiction at age 9 or so, and I don't think I encountered any sympathetically written gay characters - in historical or centemporary fiction - until when I was 13 and read The Mists of Avalon (and then the Darkover novels). (Insert obvious comment about MZB's later discovered rl terribleness here, but those books were quite eye opening to young me back then.)
Gosh, I read Angelique and I don't remember this, it must have gone straight over my head! I also don't remember them in Avalon, which I read at age 11 or 12... I think I really didn't understand what was going on until a couple of years later. I know that by the time I was 14 or 15 I had read A House Like a Lotus and Songmaster and recognized those as sympathetic gay characters.
if you can get a digital copy of Voltaire's "Age of Louis XIV" in either English or German for me, I would be very grateful, and since this is supposed to be one of his big oeuvres, I would also do a write up for you.
Yay, I am so excited!! :D
Re: French gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2023-01-21 01:43 pm (UTC)He so is! The 2005 date and the Spanheim quote made me initially optimistic, but I'm getting a super conservative vibe from this author, and not just from this. Meh.
Lol at the knight of Lorraine! Google translate, always ready to entertain.
Hang on, shouldn't he be already out of the picture if the Chevalier is around?
Wikipedia indicates he was banished in 1662 and died in 1673, and of course Eugene was only born in 1663, so they definitely didn't overlap! The author seems to be collapsing Philippe's entire life story into a single period, thus adding errors of fact to his problematic opinions.
Was he working for the Great Elector or for F1?
Both, but Eugene leaves France in 1683, and the Great Elector lived until 1688, so at the time of this quote, he was working for the Elector.
Trivia: Per Wikipedia, "In 1702, he went on his final diplomatic mission, as the first Prussian ambassador to England. He died in London in 1710 and was buried in Westminster Abbey."
Anyway, raping, castrating and killing a guy and torturing women is quite different from organizing consensual m/m orgies, so I hope that it either didn't happen this way or that young Eugene did not participate.
I sincerely hope not!
These were the first homosexual characters I encountered in fiction at age 9 or so, and I don't think I encountered any sympathetically written gay characters - in historical or centemporary fiction - until when I was 13 and read The Mists of Avalon
I had a very sheltered (and prudish) youth, so the gayness in The Mists of Avalon went Whooosh! right over my head at age 14. At that age, I think I didn't even know what homosexuality was. I don't think I encountered sympathetic gay characters that registered on my radar until I was about 16/17. Harry Potter fanfic on FFN was not only my introduction to homosexuality, but responsible for most of my sexual education at all! :)
Re: French gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2023-01-21 02:37 pm (UTC)It brings back happy memories of Cape Stallion.
The author seems to be collapsing Philippe's entire life story into a single period, thus adding errors of fact to his problematic opinions.
Indeed. Btw, skipping in and out of Voltaire's book, I see that the teenage Duc de Vermandois who gets entangled in the scandalous goings-on and is one of Louis' illegitimate sons is also the son of Louise de la Valliere, Louis' first official Maitresse en titre. Since he then dies at age 16, it's even less likely he ever hung out with Eugene, because wasn't Eugene the youngest of Olympe's kids? Also, when reporting on Louise de la Valliere's post-mistress life, where she retired into a convent as Sister Louisa the Penitent and lived there wairing a hair shirt till her death in 1710: Voltaire snarks thusly:
A king should deserve the name of tyrant were he punish a guilty woman with so much severity ; yet many a woman has punished herself thus for having loved. There are scarcely any examples of statesmen who have buried themselves in this manner ; yet the guilt of politicians seems to stand more in need of expiation than the frailty of lovers ; but those who govern souls have authority only with the powerless. It is generally known that when Sister Louisa was informed of the death of the Duke of Vermandois, her son by the King, she said: "I should lament his birth more grieveously than his death.
Re: French gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2023-01-21 02:41 pm (UTC)It does, and Travel Jokes, and the cheap warehouse in rubbish soaps. I enjoyed your comment that you looked forward to the arrival of Chalk Remorse!
Since he then dies at age 16, it's even less likely he ever hung out with Eugene, because wasn't Eugene the youngest of Olympe's kids?
I had the same thought as you initially, but I cross-referenced the dates, and the chronology checks out. He died in 1683, the same year Eugene left France for Austria. So they would have been hanging out at orgies (and hopefully not torture sessions) at the same time.
Re: French gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2023-01-21 02:20 pm (UTC)Btw, Wikipedia's source is Ziegler's Der Hof Ludwigs XIV. [des Vierzehnten] in Augenzeugenberichten, which seems like your kind of thing! Have you read it?
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Date: 2023-01-21 05:29 am (UTC)OMG it does seem to have delivered! There were so many points where I was !!!!! and WTF in those paragraphs, I would be quoting practically the whole thing. This is amazing. No, okay, I have to say
These follies, Choisy shares with Eugène, who has the opportunity to transform his deformed body into a more attractive silhouette thanks to the frilly outfits he likes to wear.
...I think I may have to revamp my internal picture of Eugene...
Re: French gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2023-01-21 02:10 pm (UTC)Why do you think I quoted THE WHOLE THING? :D
...I think I may have to revamp my internal picture of Eugene...
Right?!
Voltaire about Eugene
Date: 2023-01-21 02:18 pm (UTC)Not being able to succeed with Louis XIV. , he went to serve the emperor against the Turks in Hungary, in 1684, together with the princes of Conti , who had already made a glorious campaign there . The king sent an order to the princes of Conti, and all those who had accompanied them in this expedition , to return home . The abbot of Savoy was the only one who refused to comply with this mandate : he continued his journey, openly declaring that he renounced France forever. The king, when he was told of this, said to his courtiers, “ Don't you think I have had a great loss ? " and these gentlemen gave it as their opinion that the abbot of Savoy would always be a mad - headed fellow , and fit for nothing. They founded their judgment on certain sallies of youth, by which we are never to judge of men . This prince , who was held in so much contempt at the court of France, was born with all the qualifications which form the hero in war and the great man in peace . He had a just and lofty mind , and the necessary courage, both in the field and cabinet. He was guilty of faults, as all generals have been , but these were lost in the number of his great actions . He shook the greatness of Louis XIV. and the Ottoman power : he governed the empire , and in the course of his victories and ministry showed an equal contempt for vainglory and riches. He cherished , and even protected , learning, as much as could be done at the court of Vienna.
Re: Voltaire about Eugene
Date: 2023-01-21 03:27 pm (UTC)Evidently not!
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Date: 2023-01-21 02:12 pm (UTC)* So we knew Olympe had been banished from France and moved to Brussels, but according to Pigaillem, Louis forbade French travelers to visit her.
* When Eugene and the Prince de Conti fled France, they snuck out of Paris disguised as women.
Eugene: Disguise? You just said I dress like this all the time!
:P
* According to McKay, they were caught by Louis' agents in Frankfurt. According to Pigaillem, they were caught in Brussels at Olympe's house, which made things worse because Louis had forbidden his subjects to visit her.
Re: French gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2023-01-24 11:05 pm (UTC)A few weeks after his departure, when the suitors had arrived at court, he sent one of his friends, the chevalier de Roccavione, who was excessively effeminate, to Madrid. It is undoubtedly the appearance of this character with equivocal attitudes which is the reason why none of these three marriage projects succeeds. Paul Frischauer writes: "The courteous and respectful historians have left in the shadows the private life and personality of Eugene, declared intangible, so that this prince whom tradition had dubbed the 'Mars without Venus' and who had no wife, did not allow, alas! for collectors of stories to collect their easy marital anecdotes about him. No one dared to penetrate the secret of this existence without women. He was claimed to be insensitive to the pleasures as well as to the pains of life, they made him a man deprived of feelings, of meaning: a brain and no heart."
We remember that in the past a homosexual circle had formed among those close to Eugene, of which almost all the young princes of the blood and their intimate friends belonged. On reception evenings, when the last servant had snuffed out all the candles, Eugene's intimates remained to pass the night and all wallowed in orgies until morning. There was still only Mars, and no Venus.
(Let me know if Google did anything entertaining. I did fix the "knight of". ;) )
You know, one of the books about Charles XII I read decided he was asexual and therefore had a defective personality and was inferior to Peter the Great, who at least had human passion...I am getting rather tired of this take on asexuality.
But the important thing, and the reason I shared this, is that we have the name of a potential Eugene boyfriend!
Re: French gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2023-01-25 07:11 am (UTC)Still, yes, it's good to have at least one candidate for potential boyfriend. Who exactly was this knight of Roccavione?
Re: French gossipy sensationalism
Date: 2023-01-25 08:40 pm (UTC)I read it as him saying historians have been no-homoing Eugene and haven't dared to write down all the gayness, so they've portrayed him as asexual. Much like I'm pretty sure happened with Fritz, which is why I entered salon with a belief he had little or no sex drive. I'm now reasonable sure that a lot of no homo historiography went into this depiction.
But anyway, I think Pigaillem is saying there's plenty of *contemporary* evidence for Eugene's gayness that has been ignored in favor of a "all Mars, no Venus" attitude. And which he, Pigaillem, is now sharing with us. (Despite being a sexist ass with questionable chronology, he has his good points.)
Who exactly was this knight of Roccavione?
(lol at "knight of") If I'd been able to find anything, I would have told you! I googled him immediately, but I only got two hits, both from Eugene bios, and one said even less than what I told you here: just that Eugene sent him to Madrid as his representative when Olympe was trying to marry her son off.
The other is Braubach's bio of Eugene, which I don't know if I've mentioned it, but it's a mid-20th-century 5 volume magnum opus that gave Ragnhild Hatton biographer's envy. She say she wished she could believe anyone would read 5 volumes from her on Charles XII, but she didn't, so she was sticking with one volume. Braubach's been sitting in my Abebooks basket for about a year, but I've been holding off, since even if my German improves massively, $100 is a lot for something there's no way I'm reading 5 volumes of.
...
Oh, all right, I bought it. You twisted my arm. :P
I'm like an alcoholic with my book-buying. It's not about reading, it's about owning so I can do my detective work!
When it arrives, I will scan it and use the search function and see what I can tell you. I warn you that it's probably not a lot, though, judging from the snippets I got from Google.
The knight of Roccavione is like Count Martelli, my searches have been fruitless! (Yes, I do fantasize about learning handwriting *and* Italian and hunting through the Florentine archives, why do you ask? :P Realistically, by the time I have either of those skills, I won't care about Martelli any more.)
But I've been wanting to own the Braubach bio for my own purposes for a year now, so I'll be glad to have it even if we don't learn anything about Eugene's boyfriend. German practice, if nothing else.
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